This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
In an optical communication system, a series of one or more spans of optical fiber typically carries data from an optical transmitter to an optical receiver. The optical fiber may be fabricated to have one or multiple propagation modes for light having a wavelength in ordinary optical telecommunication bands, e.g., the optical S-band, C-band or L-band. In a multi-mode optical fiber, multiple propagation modes are available, and each of the propagation modes may carry a different data stream. Thus, a multi-mode optical fiber may be able to support a larger data transmission rate in a given frequency band than a single-mode optical fiber.